Apple AirTags to Track Luggage: Not Perfect

If you’re into travel, it’s been hard to avoid recent news articles and videos showing massive amounts of lost or misdirected luggage in various airports around the world. With staffing and other issues at airlines and airports, it’s been an ongoing problem for months.

While I’m firmly on team carry-on only, my wife is team checked bag. That means for an international trip, I have to (unwillingly) change teams. So long story short, I decided to buy some Apple AirTags to keep track of our luggage in case there was any confusion at the airport. It didn’t quite work as expected.

I bought a 4 pack. I dropped one in our checked bag and kept one in each of our carry-on bags. We left one at home. My thinking was that I’ll know where the checked bag is all times, and if it happens to go missing between the plane and conveyer belt, I might be able to direct some airport personnel to where it is. Or in the worst case, I’ll know our luggage simply didn’t make it on the same plane as us and we can keep an eye on where it actually is.

So we began an international trip that took us to London, Athens, and Cairo. Anyone in the travel space knows that London Heathrow is a circus with issues upon issues right now. Thankfully, we didn’t have any problems at all with luggage or anything else on arrival. Side note: if you’re departing from London, I would HIGHLY recommend getting to the airport 3 hours early, because it was a bit chaotic in Terminal 2.

Now, back to the AirTags. After dropping our checked bag off at the counter, we proceeded through security and to our gate like normal. Once we got on the plane, I asked my wife to check the location of our bag to make sure it was with us. When she checked, it showed the bag was nearby (it looked just inside the terminal rather than on the plane), so we thought everything looked great.

Then we started to taxi and got to the runway, and the location of our checked bag still showed at the terminal, while our two carryon bags showed as with us. We kept waiting for it to update, and it never did. We took off from London to Athens and the AirTag still showed our checked bag at the terminal in Heathrow.

That’s when some stress and anxiety kicked in. I started with all the questions:

• What essentials are on that bag that we need to buy when we land?
• What credit card did I use to book this flight so I can claim some bag delay compensation?
• What are the actual benefits to that credit card’s policy?
• Should I notify a flight attendant in hopes that they can locate it and bring it on the next flight?

When we landed in Athens, I started looking up shopping malls where we could get some replacement clothing. But at some point while getting off the plane, the AirTag location updated to show that the bag was actually on our plane.

So we had a 3.5 hour flight with the stress and anxiety of knowing that our bag wasn’t with us, only to find out that it was on our plane the whole time. There was a mixed bag of emotions at that point: relief we had the bag, confusion why the location wasn’t accurate, and some anger that I had to stress about it for the duration of my flight for seemingly no good reason.

It was an interesting realization that the AirTags I bought with the intention to reduce my stress and anxiety actually increased it.

Fast forward to Cairo. We didn’t have any issue with tracking on the way from Athens to Cairo, but we did find that it was again not tracking properly. At the end of our trip, right as we were boarding our flight at Cairo’s airport to start our journey home, the AirTag still showed our checked bag as being back at the hotel while the two carryon bags were with us. Thankfully I at least knew the checked bag got to the airport with us since I checked it in at the counter, but it was still not showing up accurately.

In some ways, I had lost faith in the Apple AirTag. I’m not sure whether this particular Airtag was malfunctioning or there was some other issue, but by the end of this trip I simply couldn’t rely on it like I had hoped and expected.

I’m certainly not saying that it’s useless – I will use them again on my next trip. But they’re not perfect. Do not rely on them entirely, and try not to stress if you see something you don’t expect. I suggest a healthy dose of cautious optimism while covering your bases. Those questions I started asking myself about the credit card benefits and nearest mall are things worth asking if you’re traveling with a checked bag.

Of course, this could all have been avoided if I simply stayed on team carry-on only..